The Fifth Time Around
by fairy tale echo
Summary: And the thing is you should totally be, like, ecstatic. Only you're not. [immediately postfinale]


_And the thing is you should totally be, like, miserable._

_Only you're not._

Brian Krakow _should _be lying on the ground sobbing in pain or something. Instead he realizes that he feels … totally liberated.

Knowing that Angela Chase was walking around with _his_ words in her hand, that _his_ words had made her look at Jordan with her soft eyes, had made him feel constantly nauseous. It was a burning feeling in the bottom of his stomach that hadn't gone away from the second he'd put the note in Jordan's hand. For one terrifying moment, standing in front of him, he honestly thought he was going to vomit all over Jordan's shoes. But he hadn't vomited. He'd turned to stone. Stone that didn't even, like, wince the next day when Angela was kissing Jordan.

But tonight? When he looked at Angela and knew that _she_ knew that they were _his_ words, it was like all the anger and bitterness in the bottom of his stomach melted away, the stone feeling vanished. It was so much more than he'd expected, when he'd been confessing everything to the letter. Not only did she know they were _his_ words but…they had made her _happy_.

Something hard and scared uncoiled in Brian as he watched Angela ride off in Jordan's car. He'd expected that feeling of loneliness, that one that told him he was such a loser, to bloom up in its place but it hadn't. Because what it came down to, Brian had realized, was that, OK, maybe he was the _dork_ out here in front of his house on a bike while Jordan Catalano had this cool car and the girl Brian had been in love with since he was, like, eight? But he wasn't a _loser_.

Because losers couldn't write letters to girls that made them, like, happy and get that _look_ on their face like Angela had on the bus, as if something in her had been permanently changed. Brian had written a letter that did that, that made Angela Chase look like someone was standing behind her, lighting her up with a 1,000 watt bulb, that made her eyes go soft, that she _knew_ was a love letter. Brian had written a letter like that. And Angela knew it was him.

So, instead of feeling miserable, Brian was actually laughing. And not the hysterical kind where he was afraid that maybe it was going to turn into crying a few minutes later. Real laughing, from somewhere in his chest. He was laughing and riding his bike up and down the street, pedaling frantically, and trying not to scream at the moon.

All he'd wanted to do was _tell_ Angela. This whole year, since she started turning into some creature he didn't recognize, with her bright hair and skipping classes and strange friends, all he'd ever wanted was to _tell _her. To tell her what it felt like when he looked at her and was seized up with wanting and wonder and the strangest urges. Urges like wanting to tuck the hair behind her ear or discuss with her this new theory about black holes from last month's _Scientific American_. Urges that didn't make any sense at all, that had nothing to do with what Brian was pretty sure teenage boys were supposed to feel when they looked at girls. (which wasn't to say he hadn't thought about Angela _that _way too, but, like, he's not a pervert, OK?) And all he'd wanted was to be able to somehow _tell_ Angela all of that. Only he couldn't even put it into words in his own stupid head, so how was he ever going to tell her?

It turned out all he had to do was pretend it wasn't him saying it. Once that happened, everything had come out in fits and starts. Everything he'd been trying to tell Angela spilled out. He got to apologize for everything he'd messed up and all the times it felt like he was in the way. And past apologizing, he'd got to tell her how he'd _really_ felt, and the words suddenly made sense: all the things he knew that he'd do for Angela Chase. And then it was on a piece of paper and then in her hands, though maybe not, like, in that exact order. But _his_ words were in _her _hands and he had finally, finally _told_ her.

He streaked around the corner, the wheels on his bike whirring, watching Angela's house fly by out of the corner of his eye, and he felt almost giddy, though he knew that couldn't possibly be the right word for what he was feeling. Maybe, like, there was no word for it.

_And the thing is you should totally be, like, ecstatic._

_Only you're not._

Angela felt strangely numb, sitting in the front seat of Jordan's car, watching Brian and her house get smaller in the distance. A thousand things _should_ be running through her mind but all she could think of is how, like, she never noticed that Jordan didn't actually call Brian by his real name.

How little attention has she been paying to anything that wasn't about _her_?

Out of no where, she saw herself chasing a baseball into the street between their houses and mocking Brian Krakow. She didn't even think she was trying to be mean at the time. She told him he had no idea what it was like to feel the way she felt about Jordan. She told him when he felt that way, she'd _laugh _at him. The memory is suddenly so sharp in her mind that Angela has to stifle a gasp. She felt nauseous.

She didn't feel like laughing.

For a split-second she'd almost felt like…like she wanted to_ kiss_ Brian Krakow.

And not out of pity or obligation or kindness or anything like that but because she'd suddenly felt like finding out how he'd react, if it would make her heart race the way reading his letter had.

_His_ letter. All those words that she'd cherished, literally clutching to her chest and sighing, gasping at the thought that out there in the world was someone who had written such things about her, boring Angela Chase, those were _Brian's_ words, not Jordan's.

And that totally should have mattered. Maybe in some way it did. But out there, in front of her house, with Brian unable to meet her eyes, his voice cautious and sad, what had suddenly mattered the most to her was the fact that someone had said those things about her and had **meant** them, had said them just to make her happy.

So she was thinking about leaning in to kiss Brian Krakow, honest to God she was, and she might even have done it if Jordan hadn't shown up, slouching casually and fixing his sleepy-eyed gaze on her. He pulled her towards his car and somehow every fiber in her body told her not to go but … she went. She sat in his passenger seat, watching Brian recede in the distance when only a minute before she'd been imagining what it would be like to kiss him.

Vaguely, Angela wondered what the hell was wrong with her.

Now she watched trees slip by as she stared blankly out of Jordan's car window. She didn't even know where they were going. Probably someplace deserted to make out.

Jordan's voice startled her out of her reverie. "…gave me milk and stuff."

Angela forced herself to turn and look at Jordan. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Oh, nothing, like, I was just saying, you know, your mom seemed to really like me and everything. I mean, she wanted to talk to me and everything and she even, like, gave me milk and stuff." Jordan shrugged.

All Angela could think to say was a general, "Yeah."

Her lack of response seemed to make Jordan a little uncomfortable. He shifted slightly in his seat and kept his eyes on the road. "So, I mean, I just thought, like, it would make it easier now that, like, we're, you know," he paused for a few seconds "dating."

There.

She'd heard the words coming from his own mouth. She was dating Jordan Catalano, the one thing she had wanted more than anything else from the very beginning of this year. She was dating Jordan Catalano, and he'd just said so himself.

There.

The next five words out of her mouth didn't even surprise her. "I want to go home."

Jordan stopped his car in front of Angela's house and gave her what seemed like the thousandth confused look. "So, you're not, like, mad at me or anything?" He asked, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

"No, I told you, I'm not mad. I'm just more tired than I thought." Angela repeated woodenly. "I need some, like, rest." She tightened her grip on the door handle.

For the first time she could ever recall, Angela wished, more than anything, that Jordan Catalano would not try to kiss her. If he leaned in to kiss her, she didn't trust her own mouth. She wouldn't be able to hold it all in, she'd would burst at the seams_. "You plagiarized a love letter," _she would say _"and you never even wondered _how_ he knew what to say or _why_ he'd be saying it to me or…you didn't even _care_."_

Maybe she'd scream it.

Some part of Angela whispered traitorously in her ear that she should be _flattered_, because Jordan had gone to such lengths to win her back. The voice said that Jordan was obviously, like, crazy about her, to get someone to ghostwrite a love letter for him. That must prove he really, _really _wanted her, right?

It would be so totally easy to give in to that voice and to tell Jordan she had changed her mind, that she felt like driving off right then with him.

But…the thing was Jordan hadn't copied Brian's letter to make _her_ happy. It hadn't been about her at allIt was all about Jordan. He'd copied that letter and put his name on it so that Angela would forgive him, to make _Jordan_ happy. To get what _Jordan_ wanted. That was why he'd slept with Rayanne, wasn't it? To get what Angela wouldn't give him. To make _Jordan_ happy.

And that was the moment, staring into Jordan's beautiful, blank face, that for the first time in what seemed like a million years Angela Chase asked herself:

_But who cares about making _Angela _happy_?

She knew the answer wasn't "Jordan Catalano."

She twisted the door handle nervously and almost fell out of Jordan's car onto the pavement. She hadn't realized how heavily she'd been resting on the door. "I need some, like, rest!" She repeated, a little louder this time, scrambling to stand up straight.

Jordan's quizzical look turned into one of outright confusion. "Angela, are you OK?"

"Fine! Everything is _fine_!" She shouted this time and imagined her voice echoing down the empty street.

Jordan slumped back into the driver's seat, still looking at her as if she'd suddenly grown a third arm. "Sorry, sorry for shouting," she apologized, trying to keep her voice level. She grasped the outside door handle tightly and leaned down to peak her head back into the car. She met Jordan's eyes. "It's just, Jordan? Like…I mean, did you mean everything? In the letter? Did you mean the whole thing?"

Then he wasn't surprised or confused anymore. His eyebrows relaxed and a small smile started around the corners of his mouth. "Oh," he said, as if that explained all her behavior. "I did. It was, like, everything I always dream I'm telling you, but in a letter. It was all true."

She knew that he thought she was going to kiss him now, sigh softly and tell him again how much she loved the letter.

"All right then."

She slammed the door and walked towards her house without looking back.

The fifth time around the block Brian began to feel winded, but a good, exciting kind of winded. A kind of winded that made him feel like something in his life was just starting. But it was the fifth time around, coming up on Angela's house, when he thought that he saw someone standing on the curb in front of her house.

He slowed down to make sure, but he knew. He knew because he could tell by the way she rocked back and forth, by the way she rested her weight on the back of her heels, yeah, he had watched the way she moved that much, and by the way he could swear that her bright, red hair glowed.

It was Angela Chase. She was, like, standing in front of her house across the street from his house and _not_ in a car with Jordan Catalano who just drove her away less than, like, fifteen minutes ago. It was actually her.

Brian couldn't have kept going if he had wanted to.

He didn't want to.

He stopped in front of her and took a few deep gulps of air. He should've probably, like, looked away from her or something, been nonchalant. But he just kept gulping air and staring right at her, as she rocked back and forth.

"Hey," she said, giving him a half-hearted wave.

"Didn't you just, like,"

She rolled her eyes. "Duh, Brian. I just, like, left. You saw me go. But now I'm, you know, back." She stopped rocking and pointed to herself. "See me?" Her voice wasn't mocking or anything, it was soft, as if she really wanted to hear his answer, as if it weren't a rhetorical question.

And it was funny, then, that the truest, best thing he could think to say in that moment was the simplest one. "Yeah, Chase. I see you."

She blinked, and then kept her eyes closed for a long moment. He swears he can hear her swallow. Maybe she was gulping air too.

Her response was almost a whisper. "I know you do, Brian."

His heart hammered triple-time in his chest. A voice somewhere deep inside hissed at him. _"Get off your stupid bike, you dork!"_

That sounded like a pretty solid plan, so he pushed out his kickstand and stepped away from his bike. He should have caught his breath by now. Why did it feel like he still needed to be gasping for air?

"I'm sorry I let you think Jordan wrote the letter."

Saying it was like a weight off his chest. He wasn't sorry he wrote it. He wasn't sorry she read it. He wasn't sorry he finally _told _her. All that had been worth it. But seeing the way her face pulled down at the corners, on the verge of tears, when she thought it had been a joke, well, he was sorry that he tricked her.

Then she opened her eyes and started to smile, cautiously. "That was a rotten thing to do." She was still smiling when she said it, though.

"I know it was, just, I was… you know,"

She can't be more than ten steps from him. She was standing there, on her curb, with her eyes open and this delicate smile playing around her eyes, looking right at him.

"I was scared."

When she nodded and said, "I know." Brian crossed the ten steps that separated them.

He didn't have to apologize, was the thing. There were a million things he could have done: said good-bye and walked off, or tried to kiss her without saying anything, or made a joke, or kept asking why she was back. A million things he could have done, she knows. But he apologized.

It shouldn't mean as much as it does.

He apologized. He wrote the letter. He got off his bike.

It was her turn.

"Brian?"

"Yeah?"

"Brian will you… will you… write me another letter?"

But she doesn't expect an answer right away because, like, he was wrapping his arms around her waist, and he wasn't even really shaking, maybe because she moved towards him, into his embrace, and wound her arms up around his neck.

She was to kiss Brian Krakow.

Brian Krakow was going to kiss her.

He should really have been panicking now. Because, like, this was his first kiss with, like, _the _girl. And the way this night should turn out was Brian gets liberated and Angela Chase ending up with Jordan Catalano and it's no big deal, business as usual. This night was not supposed to turn out with Angela Chase moving into his arms, stretching her arms to reach around his neck, and titling her face up towards him. This wasn't business as usual.

But he didn't panic. Because Jordan Catalano was no where to be seen, he drove off. And because she tilted up, eyes fluttering closed. Because it was _his_ arms.

_And I hate this pen I'm holding, because I should be holding you._

It wasn't one of those awkward first kisses or anything. At first it was just the barest hint of her lips on his, feathery smooth and the littlest bit shy. He could hear the blood in his veins, hell, he could hear the blood in her veins. When he pulled her closer and wrapped his arms around her waist even tighter and she pushed up on her toes to get nearer to him, he could hear a butterfly flap its wings in Mongolia. He didn't know exactly how they opened their mouths, or who did it first, but he had only a split second to hope that it didn't turn all slobbery and wet before his tongue touched Angela's and it felt like the most natural thing in the universe, the way their mouths seemed to melt together, her tongue along the roof of his mouth. He knew, somehow, to run a hand up and down her back, to feel the line of her as she curved into his touch, under his very fingertips.

This, _this_, was the whole truth.

Then it wasn't like they pulled away or even stopped, it was just that she went back to the soles of her feet and he released her just an inch or two and Brian realized that this is just, like, a break in the kissing. The kissing, the part where he kissed Angela Chase, would continue.

She might've even had stars in her eyes when she opened her eyes and looked at him, and she was most definitely smiling. "Oh, _Brian_," She murmured, as if he had just unlocked the human genome or figured out what dark matter is.

As if she was _happy._

Brian smiled back at her and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Chase, I'll write you a letter every day. But first, I want to tell you about this new theory about black holes."

And she laughed when Brian leaned in to whisper something in her ear.


End file.
